Law Firm SEO Basics: A Plain-English Guide for UK Firms

What is SEO and how does Google decide what to show?

Search engine optimisation is the practice of making your website easy for Google to find, understand and trust, so that it can show your pages to people searching for what you offer. Google finds most pages by following links, then reads the text, headings, images and structure to decide what each page is about. Its guide to SEO says to give each page a unique and clear title, write content that is easy to read, well organised and original, use descriptive links, and add alt text to images. It also says that Google does not evaluate the order or number of headings. For local searches, such as "family solicitor near me", Google uses three things: relevance, distance and prominence, and it says you cannot pay for a better local ranking. Taken together, this means that SEO is mostly about doing ordinary things well and keeping at them, not about tricks.

What are the four parts of law firm SEO?

Think of SEO as four jobs that support each other. The first is technical health: Google must be able to load your pages, and visitors need a fast, mobile-friendly site. Google's Web Vitals guidance gives "good" targets at the 75th percentile of Largest Contentful Paint at or under 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint at or under 200 milliseconds and Cumulative Layout Shift at or under 0.1. The second is content: a clear page for each type of work, written for clients. The third is local presence: an accurate Google Business Profile, reviews and consistent details wherever your firm is listed. The fourth is measurement: knowing which pages and sources bring enquiries and signed cases. Weakness in any one limits the others. A fast site with thin pages gains little, and excellent pages on a broken site may never be read.

• Technical: can Google load and read the site, and is it quick on a phone?
• Content: is there a helpful page for each type of work you want?
• Local: is your Business Profile complete, and are your details consistent?
• Measurement: do you know which pages and sources produce signed cases?

What should you do first?

Start with a short list you can finish in a month, and do it in order. First, check that Google can reach your pages and that your key pages are indexed. Google suggests using a site: search and the URL Inspection tool in Search Console to check. Second, give each practice area its own page, with a clear title and a plain-English summary. Our guide to practice area pages shows how. Third, claim and complete your Google Business Profile, as described in our Google Business Profile guide. Fourth, test the site on a phone and fix anything slow or hard to use. Fifth, make sure your regulatory details are in place, as listed in our SRA website checklist. Sixth, set up tracking, so you can see enquiries by source. These steps cost little and also help every other kind of marketing you do.

How long does law firm SEO take?

Nobody can give your firm an exact date, and anyone who does should be questioned. Google says changes to your site can take from hours to several months to show up in results, and that waiting a few weeks is a reasonable point to start assessing them. In practice, the speed depends on how much needs fixing, how competitive your area is, how strong your site is already and how much new work you publish. A firm in a quiet local market with a good site may see movement sooner than a firm competing for national searches with a thin one. Plan for months, not weeks, and agree what you will review at 30, 90 and 180 days. Early checks should look at whether pages are indexed, whether the site is faster and whether enquiries are being recorded. Later checks can look at searches, clicks and signed cases from search.

Do you need a different approach for AI search?

Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and no special markup or files are needed. The same fundamentals apply: let Google crawl your pages, link them well, offer a good experience, write text-based content and keep any structured data in line with what is on the page. A page must be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet, and even then appearance can never be promised. Clicks from these features are reported in Search Console under the "Web" search type. So the answer to "how do we get found in AI answers?" is the same as for ordinary search: be clear, accurate, useful and well sourced. Be wary of anyone who sells a secret method. If a supplier proposes special files or markup for AI, ask them to show Google's own documentation that says it helps.

What mistakes do law firms make with SEO?

Many firms lose months to a handful of avoidable errors. The first is putting every service on one page, so that no page clearly matches what a client searched for. The second is copying text from other firms or from a supplier's template, which gives Google and clients nothing new. The third is changing the website without telling the person who looks after SEO, so that old pages disappear and links break. The fourth is ignoring the Google Business Profile, which for many local searches is the first thing a client sees. The fifth is measuring the wrong thing: celebrating higher rankings while enquiries stay flat, or failing to notice that calls from search are not being recorded. The sixth is buying links or reviews from a supplier, which Google's spam policies and consumer law both treat seriously. Avoid these, and most of the basics will take care of themselves.

• Fix redirects before you move or redesign a site
• Write original text for each practice area
• Keep your Business Profile and site details the same
• Report on enquiries, not only on positions

How do you judge a supplier or your own progress?

Judge SEO by business results. Rankings and visits are signs, but enquiries and signed cases are the point. Google's advice on hiring an SEO suggests asking what results to expect and how soon, how success will be measured and whether each change will be explained. It lists red flags: guarantees of a number-one ranking, claims of a special relationship with Google, secrecy about methods and link schemes. It also says you are responsible for the actions of anyone you hire, and that read-only Search Console access is enough for an audit. Keep your own login to Search Console so that you can always see the data yourself. Ask for a monthly report in plain English that shows enquiries, calls and signed cases from search, alongside any ranking data. Our guide on choosing a legal marketing provider lists more checks.

Next step

For a plain-English view of how your site is doing, request a free audit. You can also read about our law firm SEO service and how it fits with the rest of our work as an operations partner for law firms.